Paper Cuts
by Holly Chase
Summary: It's like getting stabbed every day and no one's there to hear him scream. :: Nobody can run from their troubles like Nico di Angelo. HOUSE OF HADES SPOILERS.


**It's like getting stabbed every day and no one's there to hear him scream. :: Nobody can run from their troubles like Nico di Angelo.**

**Paper Cuts**

Nico takes a shuddering breath and backs away from Percy. Percy holds out his hand.

"Nico," he says pleadingly. "Nico, we don't care."

"OF _COURSE_ YOU DON'T CARE!" shouts Nico. "THAT'S THE _POINT_!"

And then the shadows are rippling around him and engulfing him whole, like flames on a piece of driftwood.

The last thing Nico sees are sea-green eyes, misunderstanding and troubled.

.

He's never going back.

Nico stumbles through overcrowded streets, head down and avatar jacket up at the collar. To make him look unapproachable.

It works.

China is like a huge overpopulated hourglass, people pouring in and out of its toxic fumes every day.

Nico loves the place, because it's his escape from everything and everyone he knows and loves.

Nothing should remind him here.

A breeze, like a soft light-fingered brush of hands of his shoulder, pushes his hair around his head like a halo.

Jewells paint and pave the city, a strangely ironic of the country's wealth as Nico walks past a man, begging on the roadside.

_Hazel_, he thinks and steps into the dark world of shades behind huge red canopies.

.

Italy, whilst reminding him incurably of Romans was a pretty good choice as far as Nico is concerned.

And he is concerned. Very.

He counts his breathing and his steps as he slopes across cobbled paths where people shout and hold huge slices of pizza high in the air.

Nico smiles as his mother tongue breathes her comforting sense around him, like a comforting hand.

Nico could use a comforting hand about now.

Then night falls and coldness, darker and crueller than what he is used to, creeps about him. It weaves about him and snaps around his head with memories and taunting him with 'what if's and 'maybe's.

The last time Nico was here, he had a son of Poseidon by his side and a huge warship full of people who maybe have not exactly _liked_ him, per say, but one who loved him and another who accepted him for who he was.

Italy, whilst being the one place no one would follow, is the place Nico will never find peace.

He doesn't need to find shadows, they come to him.

.

His lies are getting thinner and thinner.

.

Nico keeps searching.

His eyes, haunted by the fire of a madman, are like black flames, set in an always too pale face.

He looks like a ghost.

At sixteen Nico is, literally, the dead walking.

.

The first time Nico doesn't care.

He likes the feeling of lips on his, of skin on his. It soothes the freezing ice that cracks under his skin.

Fingers play with his hair and a soft voice murmurs in his ear. Nico doesn't understand what's being said, but it doesn't matter because for the first time in too long, Nico feels wanted.

.

He gets an IM.

Nico takes one look at the faces, pinched and worried and haggard, but glowing with healthy life.

He swipes through the image with vicious satisfaction, the sight of those green eyes burning his vision until Nico's eyes blur with tears.

.

Nico sharpens his sword and watches the light pour into it, drenching the room in a crushing darkness.

.

The second time it happens it's unexpected and not entirely pleasant.

His head is being held in place and he can't breathe.

Nico doesn't want to be there, but what choice does he have?

At the end of the night, the man throws Nico a twenty euro bill and tells him to get out of his house.

Nico pulls on his clothes and is out of the door before he even really knows what happened.

He retches and meanders his way through Germany.

All around him, people look at him with a kind of reserved pity.

He doesn't think he looks that helpless and then he throws up into the gutter and realises; yes, he is.

.

The old nightmares are back.

_"Please," begged Nico and then the monsters around him fade and bulk into different people._

And you – what have you risked in my name?

_"I've been to Tartarus and back," Nico felt like a caged wild animal, desperate and terrified. "You don't scare me."_

I scare you very, very much. Face me, be honest.

_Nico is falling and holding onto the rigging of a huge ship. Below him, the ground drops a hundred or so feet into a fearsome arch. Faces appear above him._

_"Hazel!" Nico cries. "Percy, help!"_

_Their faces are stone and impassive._

_"Drop, Nico," says Annabeth and she twists her face to Percy's. "Just fall, it's not as if we'll care."_

_"How could you think I would ever like a pathetic coward like you?" Percy's voice are daggers in his side._

_Suddenly Nico is screaming with a rough force that empties him inside and out. Cupid's taunting and terrible voice force his mouth to move and Nico, as he always does in times of raw emotion, feels himself involuntarily summon the dead. Their clawing hands pull at his feet._

Will you hide among the dead, as you always do?

Will you hide among the dead as you always do?

_And Nico let loose, spilling his dreams and memories into waves of blackness that spit hatred and distress and terror. _

_Percypercypercy, are Nico's rambling thoughts. _

_His army surges around him, intending to protect him. But they can't protect Nico from himself._

_"I had a crush on Percy," Nico's voice was dry and croaky. "That's the truth. That's the big secret. Happy now?"_

_His words are laced with poisonous loathing, but Cupid merely shrugs. His gaze is sorrowful, as though he is actually sorry for Nico. _

_That hits Nico worse that a punch in the face._

_All around him, pitying faces swell into one._

_"Oh, I wouldn't say love always makes you happy," said Cupid._

Nico wakes up, sweating and shaking and his mouth parched.

.

He can't breathe.

The silence crushes him like a bug beneath a shoe.

.

The third time it happens, Nico knows what he's doing.

It's easier to relax when he knows how the pain will stop.

.

_Fin_


End file.
